


The Decline and Fall of Ryan Atwood

by themus



Category: The OC
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Child Abuse, Explicit Language, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-16
Updated: 2008-02-22
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themus/pseuds/themus
Summary: At the end of Ryan's first year with the Cohens he has to leave, not because he got Theresa pregnant, but because he did something else he can't undo.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 4th OC Sentence Fic Challenge on Livejournal.

 

This isn't the first time Ryan has been here – standing on this porch, chest tight with anxiety, hoping that someone will answer. This isn't the first time he has stood under the sad white light with the imprint of a hand on the side of his face while it makes its slow journey from shocking red to sulphurous yellow.

But Ryan never imagined he'd be back here again. Not because of the Cohens.

“Do you have any idea what time--? Ryan? Oh, my God, what happened?”

His mind is empty, hollow, and Ryan hesitates. It all seems too surreal, that he's standing here again with his small backpack of belongings after so long. And, ludicrously, the only explanation that comes into his head is the very first thing he ever said to her, whispered in secrecy behind the school's rickety swing-set.

“I . . . I fell off my bike.” He can't focus on her, but there's that fucking silence after his unsteady words and she reads him so easily. It's frightening and comforting all at once.

And suddenly he's wrapped up in her arms, backpack and all, and he's shaking shamelessly, unspoken words burning on his lips like acid. And she's so warm, the way he always remembers her; warm with the scent of spice and flowers and the sharp tang of her silver necklace as he buries his head in the crook of her neck. And Theresa, Theresa, Theresa, he has needed this for so long – for excruciating hours, sat at the back of the night bus from Newport. A place that used to be home.

“Ryan, what happened? Why aren't you at the Cohens'? Do they know you're here?”

Too many questions and Ryan shakes his head, her skin so smooth on his face, the soft brown of cocoa butter.

She pulls him inside, twisting so that her arm is tight around his shoulders. “It's a good thing Mom is at work, she'd be freaking right now.”

He feels her guide him up the stairs, his arm brushing hard against the wall, but his head is on her shoulder and the warmth is seeping through as he watches her feet rise and fall.

“You can use my room, Arturo's is filled with boxes.”

Arturo. 'Turo. 'Turo and Trey. 'Turo and Trey and Eddie and--

“Eddie,” he says aloud, using all the energy he has on that one word and trusting her to fill in the rest. The last time he saw her was at her engagement party. Engaged to Eddie.

He shouldn't have come here.

Ryan begins to pull away. Moving away from her, losing the contact is like tearing his skin away from the bones. But Eddie, and he shouldn't have come here. Although he doesn't know where else he can go.

“Ryan, it's fine. Me and Eddie, we aren't any more.”

“You . . . aren't,” he repeats, dully.

“It didn't work out.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind Ryan knows he should say something. Like 'sorry', that's normal. But he just curls himself back into her. It's been such a long week, and he's so tired. And today . . . today, today. Today is the end of his world. Tomorrow he'll have to find a new one.

Ryan isn't sure when his eyes slipped shut, but he can feel Theresa's mattress beneath him, with that same awkward lump where the springs have slipped resting in the small of his back. It's always been there – irritating and familiar, a memento of all the times he scaled their dividing fence, climbed her garage roof to slip through her window in the middle of the night.

His jacket and boots are gone, though he doesn't remember her taking them, and he's still shaking in his short-sleeved shirt.

He feels the bed dipping under her weight and her arm settling over him. She is warmth and sunshine and everything good. He is ice and darkness and destruction.

He shouldn't have come here.

Her fingers move on his arm, rubbing the goosebumps away from the skin - up to his elbow, down to his wrist.

“These clothes stink of smoke, Ryan.”

That was the first thing he did at the bus station – buy two packets of cigarettes from the vending machine. He smoked both on the way down. The driver kept looking at him, like he was ruining the guy's whole week by lighting up.

But Ryan was already ruined, and he couldn't bring himself to care.

“I'll get you one of 'Turo's t-shirts to sleep in.”

'Turo and Trey and Eddie and Ryan. The old crew. Years ago, eons, in a previous lifetime, they were everything to him. He should never have left.

“Let's get this off before the smoke gets into the covers.”

She tugs at the buttons on his shirt, peeling it away softly the way she always used to, like she's afraid she'll hurt him if she isn't gentle.

And today he feels broken, unmendable. Like there is nothing strong enough to bind him in place, nothing to stop him from breaking apart and scattering jagged pieces of himself across the void.

“Ryan, what happened?”

Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, when he can think. Now there is no thinking, there is no answering. There is the absence of thought, the welcome emptiness.

Her fingers are resting on his arm, the tips brushing over stinging red lines, raised skin, matching the aching blue of bruises.

“What happened?”

“I made a mistake,” he whispers, letting himself drift into cavernous sleep.

And it can't be undone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The sound seems to echo forever.

Ryan is frozen where motion halted, like he's a dumb animal caught unaware - stuffed and mounted with stupefied shock still on his face. He can't think but he recognises the burning sensation in his cheek, he can feel the familiar pattern through the stinging; five elegant red fingers imprinted on skin.

The meaty noise of hand meeting face is still reverberating across the tiles and the counters, back and forth, back and forth, undiminishing.

Ryan stares at the floor - a peppered, milky white like melted vanilla ice-cream.  Luxurious.  His reflection in it is out of place; his black, hulking shape eroded into a dull edge.

“Don't you  _ever_  say that to me again.”

Ryan swallows hard against the lump in his throat.  "I'm sorry," he whispers.  And, God, he's so sorry, even though he can't remember what he's sorry for.  For what he said, for what she did. For being there, for just being.

He feels weighted and undefined, a misshapen plasticine boy filled with tar where the heart should be. And he can't look at her any more, not now that she owns him like his mother still owns him – with guilt and anger and lies.

He should never have come here, to this room, this house, this place. He should never have come.

She walks away, unsteady, and her arm brushes his with an electric shock. She feels cold and sharp, smells like cheap Vodka; she is doused in it, marinated, baked in the juices like a Christmas turkey. She used to smell of fresh bread and perfume, her fingers used to have a light, dancing touch. Now the shadows of them burn on his face. He knows they're there – a neon red reminder of his stupidity.

He has ruined everything. He kept the delicate balance for so long. And then with one simple word; one simple, stupid word he brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

And all he can think about is getting away.

His feet take him back out to the pool house. His hands pack up his green canvas bag. He wants to change out of these clothes – the clothes that she bought him, but he can't stand to feel the air on his skin and that cold knowledge that he's alive, that this is real. Ruined.

There is a cigarette between his fingers, a stale half-smoked remnant found in the bottom of the canvas bag. It's been almost a year but it feels comfortingly familiar, that taste of invisibility and air, and that's what he wants to be right now; he wants to be the ghost of his pale reflection in the finger-smudged glass, floating in dark space.

He wants to be a distant speck, far away.

The lights burn when they click on. He needs to be in the dark; hidden and protected. Invisible.

“Where are you going?”

Going, going, going.  He is going because he should never have stayed.  He should have gone to Vegas with Seth and Sandy; he should have gone out with Marissa; he should have gone to the group home; he should have spent a night on the streets.  He should never have called.  He should never have come here.

“Don't you walk away from me.”

Her fingers close around his arm. They are icy now - they burn cold while the shadows on his face burn hot.

"It was an accident, you know that."

He knows that he's tired, so tired, and he has been for so long and her words are nothingness; meaningless excuses that he can't comprehend.  Her mark is already on him. It is too late now to assign importance to other words, other actions.

Ryan can feel the skin scraping from his arm as he pulls free, out onto the patio where heat seeps up through his boots.

"Ryan!  Come back here."

Out beyond the house the night is dark, full of welcoming shadows and the bleak anonymity of enshrouding black.

“Come back, Ryan, now. Ryan!”

But he cannot go back. And she will not follow.


	3. Chapter 3

 

The clock blinks three a.m.

Ryan doesn't remember the last time he felt this tired – completely and utterly consumed by exhaustion. The last of Julie's bachelorette party left hours ago and his pile of English revision is still lying untouched at the foot of his bed, notes fallen in scrambled piles as he shifts on the mattress. Steinbeck has slowly mixed with Du Maurier, Elliott has collapsed beside Orwell with unassuming laziness.

Everything is blurring together as he raises a hand to rub his eyes, knocking blindly at the cellphone he has pressed to his ear.

“I don't hate you, Mom.” It's a sigh, this formulaic response; the words too familiar, too often repeated.

She sobs, slurring the same drunken apologies, the same unfulfilled promises Ryan has heard most of his life. Her voice is a riptide, sucking in energy and emotion, pulling him down.

“I don't hate you, Mom. I--”

The call cuts off with a crackle and click and the line buzzes into dial tone.

The silence is thick syrup, choking out all noise.

Ryan sighs, folding the cellphone shut again and slipping it back into his pocket, swallowing at a dry and scratchy throat.

The clock is blinking three oh two while Ryan steps into the main house's dark kitchen, fumbling under the blinding refrigerator light for a chilled can of lemonade. Shutting the door again he's left with the yellow glare in the middle of his vision, blinking erratically across the cabinets and floor tiles. He shuts his eyes hard and the yellow blots outward into a sphere of green and blue before eventually bleeding into transparency.

He blinks again as the kitchen light flickers back on, squinting in the sudden brightness which bleaches the room, draining it of colour.

“Ryan? It's late, what are you doing still up?”

She's drunk.

He knows it from the slight sway in her step, from the way her words compress too close together, from that odour like paint thinner which drips from the crystal glass in her hand.

They served wine at the party, but it's vodka which is choking him, pricking at his eyes and the back of his throat.

How long has she been drinking, alone? Minutes, or hours?

“Don't look at me like that, I was just trying to wind down. Julie Cooper is about to become my step-mother, for God's sake.”

Ryan flinches at her tone as ice flowers in his stomach and blooms outwards through his veins.

He thinks the glass in her hand is cracking, scattering light in splintered shards across the room.

He thinks he is cracking too.

Because it isn't supposed to be like this. Not here. Not _her._

“Oh, God, I'm sorry, Ryan. I'm so sorry – this has just been a really stressful month, that's all.”

The change is too fast, the emotions too heightened, the snap from anger to guilt too quick to be fuelled by anything other than alcohol.

And he knows when she drops the glass to the counter on its side that she's more than 'just' drunk. Because she doesn't notice or doesn't care and Kirsten _always_ notices. And the puddle of vodka is seeping out onto the counter now, dripping onto the floor, absorbing the spray of light only to throw it back at all the wrong angles.

“You hate me, don't you?”

“No, I don't--”

She is crying now, and the sound makes his head spin, breathes frost into his lungs, as the clock on the cooker blinks three oh five.

This is too strange to be real, too sudden.

Only five minutes ago he was still cramming for his finals. Now he's frozen in this room with this person who has taken Kirsten away from him.

And he can't help but wonder if he will ever get her back.

“You hate me.”

And the words just slip out, unintended, automatic, like they have a thousand times before. “I don't hate you, Mom.”

And even before Kirsten stops crying suddenly, lips trembling in shock; even before her face twists into guilt-ridden anger; before she moves, hand raised, and the ring on her finger glints, once, in the light; Ryan knows he's made a horrible mistake.

“How dare you say that to me? I am _nothing_ like her.”

And it can't be undone.


End file.
